Most publications, whether requested by an entity or sent to an entity unsolicited, are mass-produced with content that is selected to appeal to some percentage of the recipients. Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and advertising material fit this description.
Catalogue advertising is a particularly apt example of this form of publication. Six days a week, the family mailbox is stuffed with unsolicited product literature, generically (but not affectionately) referred to as “junk mail.” Typically, junk mail includes bankcard solicitations, coupons, flyers from supermarkets and store catalogues. To the recipient, this mound of paper is mostly unwanted and intrusive hounding by relentless hawkers of products and services.
To the businesses that send solicitations, flooding the consumer market with paper is a game of chance with a low, but finite probability of success. To many businesses, the mailed solicitation is the only vehicle for getting a message to a potential customer. In large part, junk mail has come to be accepted as a price for having a mailbox. Most of it is disposed of without even a glance. It is currently estimated that returns on unsolicited advertising are less than 1.5%.
While junk mail is relatively inexpensive to produce, there are hidden costs. It is extremely inefficient to use tons of paper, ink, and other resources to produce what is essentially trash and depleted forests. When disposal costs are considered, the cost-benefit of junk mail is marginal at best.
Product catalogues, in some respects, occupy a special niche. A recipient may spend time with a catalogue if the catalogue is from a business that the recipient is familiar with or from which the recipient has purchased products. The problem with catalogues is that they reflect products selected by the advertising entity, not the recipient. The selection criteria used by the advertising entity may have more to do with margins, inventory, and trends than with the interests of the person receiving the catalogue. The catalogue may contain a product of interest to the recipient, but the recipient has to find it before the recipient's interest in the catalogue wanes.
Making catalogues more useful to consumers is not easy. For technical reasons, catalogues are still created using film photography, typesetting, layouts, paste-ups, color correcting and stripping processes developed in the 80s and 90s that are costly and inefficient. In order to drive unit costs down, catalogues must be printed in bulk. Catalogues produced with current techniques are one-size-fits-all affairs.
There exists today a class of variable, digital printers that eliminates the need for film photography, negatives and plates. These systems use templates to define the layout and contents of their output. The template not only defines what is printed where, but also imposes constraints on the graphic or text block being printed. These simple objects must fit the space defined by the template. Resizing and/or reorienting are manual, time-consuming operations. Templates thus further inhibit customization and targeting even when using variable digital printers and pre-press technology.
It is noteworthy that catalogue retailers generally have data relating a customer to particular products (e.g., cosmetics, electronic goods, sporting goods), product attributes (e.g., color or size), seasonal interests (e.g., particular sports or activities), and price sensitivity. Repeat buyers make excellent candidates for targeted catalogues. The challenge is to find a way to produce such a catalogue economically and without imposing new technological demands on retailers.
Much has been written about the potential of on-line advertising as a replacement for mailed solicitations. And while e-commerce has its positive attributes, it has not replaced conventional brick-and-mortar shopping or mail-order shopping. In theory, the searchable aspects of the Internet allow prospective purchasers to seek products they desire. This “pull” approach to sales would seem more effective than the “push” approach embodied in the unsolicited mailed flyer. Yet, even on the Internet, we are bombarded with electronic junk mail. The push approach, maligned by some e-commerce advocates, has actually been taken to a new level. Another problem with the “pull” approach is the sheer volume of responses that a product query generates. Web pages are temporal and may be “lost” in the frenzy of surfing. Even when a product is found that matches a buyer's requirements, the buyer may be wary of trading on-line, especially with vendors with whom the buyer is unfamiliar.
The advantages of the paper catalogue are that it is tangible and may be referenced without wires, modems, network configurations, or special equipment. The advantages of e-commerce offerings however, is that a potential buyer may “pull” information that is targeted to that buyer's needs or desires.
Newspapers and similar publications share some of the same drawbacks as product catalogues. Articles are typically selected for a publication based on its appeal to the majority of subscribers. Because of space limitations, articles that may appeal to a particular recipient are dropped in favor of an article with more mass appeal.
A number of approaches to targeting information to particular users have been suggested. U.S. Pat. No. 6,460,036 by Hertz (the “Hertz Patent”) describes a system for identifying desirable objects, such as news articles, in an electronic media environment. A “target profile” for each target object is constructed. A user profile of a user's attributes, including age/zip code/etc. is constructed. A summary of digital profiles of target objects that a user likes and/or dislikes (termed the “target profile interest summary” of that user) is created. The system evaluates the target profiles against the users' target profile interest summaries to generate a user-customized rank ordered listing of target objects most likely to be of interest to the user. These target objects are then presented to the user for selection.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,298,348 by Eldering (the Eldering Patent) and U.S. Patent Publication No. 20010004733 by Eldering (the Eldering Application) describe an advertisement selection system. An ad characterization vector is transmitted along with a consumer ID. The consumer ID is used to retrieve a consumer characterization vector which is correlated with the ad characterization vector to determine the suitability of the advertisement to the consumer. The consumer characterization vector describes statistical information regarding the demographics and product purchase preferences of a consumer, and is developed from previous purchases or viewing habits. A price for displaying the advertisement can be determined based on the results of the correlation of the ad characterization vector with the consumer characterization vector. The ad may be printed and sent to the consumer or prepared as an insert to a publication received by the consumer.
Both the Hertz Patent and the Eldering Application described means for selecting objects of interest to a user based on a user profile. However, neither of these references teaches how to automate the production of a customized catalogue comprising such objects.
What would be useful would be an inexpensive, automated and fast means of producing a customized catalogue that comprises content that has a high probability of being of interest to a particular recipient or that reflect subject matter reflecting a specific request of a recipient and the requirements and objectives of the retailer.